He describes a pyramid: racing cars at the apex, street-going M cars in the middle and M-lite M Performance models as the broad, high-volume base. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, the top tier of the pyramid was chunkier, but even today, though proportionally much smaller, it’s still at the top in an ideological sense.
Sure, a BMW X6 M weighing 2.3 tonnes and costing £120k doesn’t seem aligned with anything Cecotto or Ravaglia would recognise or condone. But again: logic. Last year, M sold more than 160,000 cars, a substantial proportion of them SUVs.
Maybe that’s why the BMW M4 GT3 looks so irresistibly good on track this weekend, here at the 50th running of the Nürburgring 24 Hours. They are a tonic – everything an X6 M is not.
This is the debut season for the new competition car, which replaces BMW M6 GT3 so barge-like when seen on TV that it was the source of hundreds of memes on social media. The M4 is different. The awkward aggression of the 150mm-narrower street M4 is subsumed by the aero kit, lower ride height and wild liveries. The classic 3.0 CSL Batmobile silhouette is there. Witnessing the BMWs battle their Audi R8, Porsche 911 GT3 and Mercedes-AMG counterparts feels innately special. Timeless, even.
More so at the site of M’s very first victory, back in 1973. At night, the Nordschleife takes on the atmosphere of a medieval army camp, the cars as battered and gladiatorial as grizzly soldiers. You need to experience N24 to know the edgy warmth that pervades. Colourful flares and branded neon signs cut through the darkness, accompanied by the aroma of hot brakes and lighter fluid, all of it overlaid with six-, eight-, 10-cylinder thunder, Ride the Lightning and front splitters crashing to earth at Pflanzgarten with a meaty scrape.